Marketing and advertisement are some of the expenditure aspects that may take extremely large amounts of money for the companies to be able to develop and maintain a strong brand image, an influential reputation, and a growing customer base. In other words, in order to remain on top of the competition, the businesses are to invest massive amounts of money in their marketing strategies.
A couple decades ago, the mass media used to be the means for the businesses to get their messages across to the consumers. Today, social media have more attention than all the other media and that is why they represent the most effective way to market and communicate with the consumers. This paper will discuss the changes in the selling process that have occurred due to the growing influence of the social media.
The research will be supported by the examples of some of the most effective social media marketing campaigns and approaches. The way they were built and the strategies these successful campaigns employed will be discussed in terms of the adjustments made by the businesses due to the appearance of such resource as the social media.
Georgia Wells offers the general framework description for the selling strategies of the contemporary marketers using the social media as a way to reach the consumers. The framework relies on the following scenario: the businesses spend large sums of money in order to employ the teams of the most skillful and experienced marketers and craft the most aggressive and effective marketing campaigns that will be reviewed multiple times, changed, improved, and adjusted for a purpose to find the ideal message and dress it in the ideal form that would maximize the response of the consumers and attract more attention to the brand (Wells, 2014).
Creating successful marketing campaigns is the key to the growth in revenue and the popularity of the products. For the marketers to be able to develop the messages that appeal to their customer base, they need to conduct a market research and find out what kind of needs, desires, and expectations their potential consumers have, what features would be the most popular, and what challenges are to be addressed. This is where the social networks reveal an advantageous dimension – the contemporary marketers and brand developers may use such social networks as Twitter, YouTube, and Facebook to be able to detect the subjects and events that attract the most public attention.
Based on this type of social network research, the companies have a chance to construct their own marketing campaigns using blogs, videos, and posts that match the most popular themes and that way become more interesting to a larger sector of consumers (Wells, 2014). At the same time, the modern society can be characterized by a series of trends that replace one another very quickly. That way, keeping track of the latest events and the most actively discussed subjects, the marketers obtain an opportunity to notice when the trends go out of fashion and become replaced with new themes (Wells, 2014).
Differently put, following the behavior of their consumers on the social networks, the businesses have a better chance to stay in tune with the interests and needs of clients. In other words, the social media provide the marketers with multiple tools that allow them to research the customer base in real time day by day.
This tendency is more beneficial than the old-fashioned market and customer base research that took the time to collect the data, process it, acquire the results, and create a campaign based on them because all of these activities are rather time-consuming.
As a result, the final product (a marketing campaign), however accurate and appropriate for the research results, may be too late to address the themes that attract the consumers simply because the change in trends may occur before the campaign is finished and released. From the perspective of the marketers, this liability is highly unwanted as it causes a waste of investment and other resources and makes a business not as cost-effective as it could be.
Advantages
The primary advantage of the social media from the perspective of selling products is the ease of use. Wells (2014) points out that multiple businesses of different specializations employ at least one social media platform and generate at least one form of content to connect with the consumers.
Besides, the results generated by the content and its popularity among the consumers are easy to evaluate based on likes, shares, and views. Due to these options, the businesses can see what content produces better or worse results and adjust their posts in order to receive a better response from the viewers.
Moreover, having official pages on social media allows the marketers to communicate with the consumers and learn about their interests first hand (Wells, 2014).
Also, using social networks does not only allow the businesses to interact with their clients and potential consumers but also provides an opportunity to follow the activities of the competitors, their strategies, and the effect they have on the public (Wells, 2014)
Challenges
Holt (2016) points out that the appearance of the social media and their active use by the businesses and brands for a purpose to promote brands and products has worked the other way around from what it was expected to do. Namely, the author specifies that the heavy use of the branded content on the social networks has made the brands less noticeable and significant. The survey by Gallup (2013) showed that the perceived impact of the social media advertisement on the buying decisions of the consumers does not match the reality. In fact, only a small part (less than 30%) of the social media users visit the platforms to follow the trends while the majority is there for the communication with friends and family only.
Besides, Seetharaman (2015) points out that the effort required from the marketers to affect the consumers is much larger than expected. The rapid stream of content on the social networks makes the brands work 24/7 and post very actively in order to produce the effect on the potential buyers.
Campaigns
There is only one way for the marketers to capture the attention of multiple viewers for a relatively lengthy amount of time and affect their opinions – that is to create a powerful marketing campaign. Below are the examples of two of extremely effective marketing campaigns.
Bud Light Campaign
The marketing campaigns released by Bud Light have become a very important part of its brand image because of their unconventional approach and memorability (Budweiser Bud Light: Brand Profile, 2016). For example, the most recent campaign features the Bud Light Party – an image of the brand’s own political party presented in a form of an election campaign. In order to attract the attention of the Millennials, the advertisements involve multiple celebrities massively respected by the young people.
In particular, the main roles in the Bud Light Party commercials are given to Seth Rogen, Amy Schumer, and Michael Pena (Fromm, 2014). The advertisements are constructed with the inclusion many popular modern concepts, references to the pop culture, and common social arguments. Overall, the advertisements are comedic and entertaining in their key. The series of advertisements are placed on YouTube and are widely promoted in the social media.
Dove Campaign
Another massively popular social media campaign is the Real Beauty Sketches by Dove. The main strategy of this advertisement is to reach the consumers appealing to strong emotions. The campaign particularly targets women. Interestingly, the campaign video does not mention or show the Dove products in any way. That is why Baskin (2013) asks a question whether or not such message should be considered as an advertisement. The total lack of product placement made the video resemble a social ad, and so did the powerful appeal to emotion and an attempt to empower the viewers.
Discussion and Conclusion
The two exemplar campaigns are known for a massive popularity and a very active response of the consumers. Besides, both Dove and Bud Light are characterized as brands that invest huge sums of money in the advertisement. As a result, one may conclude that the brand images of Bud Light and Dove are skillfully constructed based on the social and personal relatedness and a thorough research of the interests and needs of their targeted customer sectors.
Yen, Lin, and Lin (2014) view brands as abstract entities that are built using the consumers’ perceptions, ideas, knowledge, and emotions in reference to the products. With the help of emotions, the brands become able to connect the consumers with the product designers. As a result, the emotional aspect of brands (also referred to as the brand emotions) is extremely meaningful when it comes to marketing and advertisement.
Social media represent a strong platform for the brands to reach out to the consumers, follow their activities and interests, watch out for the competition, and identify the trends that could be included in the advertisement campaigns in order to improve the sales and popularize new products. At the same time, the crowd culture that was formed with the help of the social media requires the brands to invest a much more significant effort in order to gain the attention of the masses because today views to not always equal sales and active content posting does not necessarily result in the growth of revenue (Holt, 2016).
The era of social media has created an illusion of better connectedness. In reality, the content and information have become easy to access that it has turned into a disposable entity. As a result, branding has not become easier via social networks. Instead, it has added to the initial challenges of the marketers. The contemporary branding needs unique and creative approaches because the rapid stream of content makes every message extremely forgettable and replaceable.
References
Baskin, J. S. (2013). The Opportunity for Dove to Get Real With Its Branding. Web.
Budweiser Bud Light: Brand Profile. (2016). Web.
Fromm, J. (2014). The Secret to Bud Light’s Millennial Marketing Success. Web.
Gallup. (2013). The Myth of Social Media. Web.
Holt, D. (2016). Branding in the Age of Social Media. Web.
Seetharaman, D. (2015). What Celebrities Can Teach Companies about Social Media. Web.
Wells, G. (2014). Advertisers Use Social Media to Promote Brands in Real Time. Web.
Yen, H., Lin, P., & Lin, R. (2014). Emotional Product Design and Perceived Brand Emotion. International Journal of Advances in Psychology, 3(2), 59. Web.